A place to sound off about movies, books, and politics, and the culture at large, and let's face it, whatever I feel like.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Showscript

I was going through taking files of my laptop the other day, the one I bought right before I quit my job at Goldman and moved to Vermont and eventually moved out of NY. I found a document called "Showscript1" and opened it. To my surpise, it was the map of the cabaret that Erin Neill and I did at the Duplex right before I left NY. It was called "Breaking up with NY", and it tracked our love affair with the city to its conclusion. She was moving to San Diego, I to LA. It brought back memories. It was a fun show. And I'm particularly proud of the EB White quote I found that seemed especially resonant the winter after 9/11 when we did the show. If you don't know the songs, look them up--they're really good.

Brad: I was in love with New York. I do not mean "love" in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city in the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again. -- Joan Didion

The main thing I like about New Yorkers is that they understand that their lives are a relentless circus of horrors, ending in death. As New Yorkers, we realize this, we resign ourselves to our fate, and we make sure that everyone else is as miserable as we are.

Brad: New York's such a wonderful city. Although I was at the library today. The guys are very rude. I said, "I'd like a card." He says, "You have to prove you're a citizen of New York." So I stabbed him. Emo Phillips

Erin: I think my favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you make your way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and then you continue on. In most of the world, it is known as the biathlon, except in New York City, where it is known as winter. Michael Ventre

Times Like This [Erin]

Brad: The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the rivers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of NY now: in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. –